OJINAGA, Mexico — This remote town on the Texas-Mexico border used to enjoy the distinction of being one of the busiest ports for importing Mexican cattle into the U.S.

But citing concerns about escalating drug violence in Mexico, the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year moved its cattle inspectors across the Rio Grande into Texas — a decision residents on both sides of the border say has crippled the local livestock industry.

“We feel we've been wronged. We feel the area is safe, and we're victims of circumstances (occurring) along many other borders with many issues,” said Carlos Nieto, special projects manager for Presidio, the Texas city across the border from Ojinaga. “In Washington and in (the Mexican presidential palace) Los Pinos, we're a no-man's land. They don't know about our way of life.”

Before the change, cattle were inspected and weighed — and sales finalized — on the Mexican side of the border at a multi-acre facility that could hold 15,000 animals. Ranchers from at least nine of Mexico's 31 states would send their cattle for inspection and subsequent export, said Mexican customs agent Severo Santiago Baeza.

But when the USDA left Ojinaga for Presidio, the Mexican ranchers began taking their business elsewhere, uninterested in dealing with the bureaucracy and hassle of a border crossing.

The USDA did not respond to requests for comment on the decision.

Between 2011 and 2012, more than 280,000 cattle were exported in Ojinaga. That dropped to 68,700 from September 2012 to July of this year, according to statistics from the Mexican cattleraisers union, the Union Ganadera Regional de Chihuahua. During that same time period, expenditures associated with cattle export — payments to customs brokers, taxes, corral space and transport — fell by about $5.5 million.

That lost business has extended to Presidio; the temporary pens the USDA established, which can hold only a few hundred animals already, now sit empty half the time. Locals say it's only adding to the town's poverty rate, which is currently about 34 percent, compared to the state's 17 percent average.

Nieto said the red tape comes from the addition of a step in Presidio, where cattle now must be unloaded and inspected, then reloaded and shipped again for weight and payment.

“Every time the cattle are moved, what are they doing? They are (urinating) and (defecating),” Nieto said. “And what's (urine) and (feces)? Weight. What do you get paid on? Weight.”

He said it also could contradict the government's stated goal of keeping diseased livestock from breaching U.S. borders.

“Now you're bringing cattle that may have diseases, ticks, whatever,” Nieto said. “Before, they would get dipped and checked in Mexico, and the rejects would stay there.”